Government could face legal action over cuts to ‘neglected’ Access to Work

Disabled campaigners are hoping to take legal action over government cuts to the Access to Work scheme, a campaign event has heard.

The A Thousand Cuts event, organised by disabled-led arts company Touretteshero, and supported by Graeae Theatre Company, saw Access to Work recipients and allies expose the scheme’s cuts, flaws and lengthy delays while also discussing ways to ensure its survival.

Those attending Friday’s “knowledge exchange” event heard about legal moves to seek a judicial review of the government’s cuts to the scheme; plans for an inquiry into Access to Work (AtW) by a group of parliamentarians; and ongoing efforts to produce research that would demonstrate the vital importance of the scheme in supporting disabled people’s employment.

Jess Thom (pictured), co-founder of Touretteshero, told the event – held online and in person at Graeae’s headquarters in east London – that she and colleagues were in discussions with a legal firm over the possibility of taking a judicial review case against the government.

They are seeking a disabled person whose AtW support has been cut or refused, and who has gone through the reconsideration process and is eligible for legal aid.

She said: “[I am] thinking about the action that we can take and what we can learn from other fights that have gone before, because while it feels exhausting and hard, we have been here before as communities, and we have challenged really bleak sets of circumstances.

“It is important that we do that so that future generations have the benefit of Access to Work because… it changed my life and I have a career because of it.

“It rescued me from my own preconceptions.

“I am devastated to think that that might not be there for newly-disabled people or younger disabled people or people experiencing impairment for the first time.”

She told the campaign event: “The principle of it is great but it is under-invested in and [has been] neglected and run into the ground over years.

“How it’s currently being delivered is a shit show.

“Sometimes it feels like it is easy for them to point at it and say it’s not working, when actually it’s not working because it is not being properly supported and delivered.”

Cathy Waller, chief executive of contemporary dance company and arts consultancy Cathy Waller Company, highlighted the huge delays with applications and the inconsistency of AtW case managers.

Six years ago, her company set up the Decode partnership with Disability Arts Online, to support disabled people in the arts and creative sector with their AtW claims, because she was “so annoyed by it, and so fascinated by how inaccessible it was”.

Waller said AtW had experienced a high turnover of case managers while training had been drastically cut, and delivery of the scheme was “constantly changing”, which had led to inconsistency among case managers because of the “trickle down of information”.

She said: “No two case managers will say the same thing… there’s no consistency and Access to Work know this.”

And, she said, case managers are now “cherry picking” what they want to take from assessment reports as they decide how large a grant to offer, which is “hugely problematic”.

Echoing concerns reported by Disability News Service last week, she said that self-employed claimants were having to wait 78 weeks just to hear back from a case manager after applying, compared with 37 weeks for those who are employed, before a further lengthy wait for a decision from that case manager.

Asking for a reconsideration of the grant decision leads to another 33-week wait, according to AtW.

She said the difference compared with pre-2024 was “night and day”.

Of the 170 people supported by Decode in the last two years, three-quarters of them (77 per cent) had put in a reconsideration because they were unhappy with the grant awarded, but only 19 per cent of this group had their grant increased.

Before 2024, maybe two people in a year would not have their decision changed, she said, so it had “completely switched”.
And she told the event that the disabled people Decode has worked with in the last few years had seen an average cut of 53 per cent to their AtW grants.

Jacqueline Winstanley, co-founder of the Access to Work Collective, now has more than 6,000 members – including disabled people claiming AtW, as well manufacturers, trainers, and support workers – after launching last year.

She told Friday’s event that the collective, which has now become a disabled people’s organisation, was “trying to get across to the Treasury the return of actually investing in Access to Work” by producing academic research and evidence from disabled people’s lived experience.

She said: “When they say they can’t get any more money from the Treasury, it is not because there is no money, it is because the DWP don’t have the data they would need to take it to the Treasury to evidence why they need more money.”

Winstanley said the minister for social security and disability, Sir Stephen Timms, had spoken at the Naidex exhibition the previous day and although he “accepts there’s an issue, [he] does not accept the devastation that is being caused or have a willingness to halt it” until he announces the government’s AtW reforms later this year.

But she said: “We will be able to turn this around if we continue to work as a collective.

“You only need to see how many U-turns this government has done… but we have got to be of the numbers that will make them consider doing that.”

The collective has set up an all-party parliamentary group with a focus on Access to Work, chaired by disabled Liberal Democrat MP Steve Darling, which is planning to launch an inquiry into the impact of changes to the system.

Disabled musician and activist John Kelly told the event there were similarities between the cuts and changes to Access to Work and how successive governments had slowly dismantled the Independent Living Fund.

He said: “I started getting Access to Work just when I started working with Graeae in 2009, and it changed my life, it really worked.

“I never thought I would be able to tour and do all of that sort of stuff, and Access to Work helped me to do that.”

He said the campaigning needed to bring together academic research, guidance, political and legal work, and direct action.

He said: “I think a collective of all of those is what is going to make the difference. Not one of them does it on its own.”

Amelia Lander-Cavallo, co-founder of Quiplash, taking part online, told the event: “I am an immigrant to this country and I don’t know if folks here realise how kind of unique this programme is, even with ATW in the state it is currently in.

“It doesn’t really exist in other countries.

“And for me it is the difference between me being unable to work vs running and owning my own company.

“ATW is literally one of the reasons I decided to settle in the UK.

“It is wild to me that the UK government doesn’t shout proudly about how amazing this programme is in principle and that it doesn’t bolster it and make it stronger so that it can function properly.”